This week, the Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins returned to his hobby horse of propping up housing prices by having the federal government pay for the destruction of houses. ( $ article ) “So far, Washington has put its political capital into trying to refinance salvageable homes for unsalvageable homeowners, when a relevant policy would
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., the Wall Street Journal’s most “free market” columnist reiterated his radical solution to the housing/mortgage market crash: “Using tax dollars to buy and demolish foreclosed, unoccupied or half-built houses in selected markets.” According to Jenkins, central planners have figured out the best strategies of taxing the
Silly season is back. As occurred several years ago with the mad rush to pass the disastrous Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the wake of the Enron collapse, Washington is preparing to use the imploding housing market as an excuse to ratchet up securities regulations. The trigger for a new round of rulemaking was the Fed’s decision, as part of the Bear
There has been talk that another hedge fund within a US investment bank is on the verge of imploding. Ordinarily, short sellers would be signaling the market where the trouble is. But after the run on Bear Stearns, regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into possible “stock manipulation.” This adds a new
As we embark down the path of sweeping regulatory reform of the US financial system, it useful to review the results of the previous reform. Supposedly, accounting standards were overhauled and clarified under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 to prevent companies from using accounting trickery to obscure their published financial results. In recent
In this old blog post , I jokingly suggested that Eliot Spitzer be threatened with indictment in order to force him to resign due to his serial abuses of power. Well, this is ultimately what it took. And despite the irony that this is the same tactic Spitzer used on others (and as much as I think Spitzer got what he deserved), Spitzer’s demise is
The US House of Representatives will hold hearings on energy markets trying to determine who is causing oil prices to rise. The anti-market investigation will blame hedge funds and investment banks for manipulating the markets to make oil go to record levels. Oil is too global a commodity for speculators to determine its price. We know, for
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.